Out-sourcing Torture

by soccerdad

Some new information in the case of Maher Arer, the Canadian software engineer ahanded over to the US and then transferred to Syria to be tortured.

When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of Al Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the F.B.I. that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group

And of course the US wants to be able to continue this process:

Cases like that of Mr. Arar would not be affected by the compromise legislation on detainee treatment worked out between the White House and Republican senators last week, since it would have no effect on interrogation methods used by other countries. In fact, the proposed bill would strip non-Americans held overseas under United States control of the right to challenge their detention in federal court.

“It’s a huge hole in what Congress is doing,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which represents Mr. Arar in his lawsuit. “The government can still send people secretly to other countries where they’ll be tortured.”

I'm sure that the Bush administration will soon remedy the following:

But Mr. Arar’s case is more public than other cases of rendition, because he was detained inside the United States and legally deported, creating a modest paper trail.

Well just get rid of the paper trail. From this incident, its only a tiny step to have military services pull American citizens from their homes, leaving no paper trail in the name of "national security", and sending them to some offshore facility or another country for "aggressive interrogation" or whatever they are calling it this week.